If you ever find yourself in New York City, take a trip to DC Comics and check out the company who paved the way for comic books and superheroes as we know them today. Since 1934 (DC is a whole five years older than its competitor Marvel Comics), DC have been delivering epic tales of good vs. evil in comic book and movie form.

Superman and Batman are the best-known DC originals and still are the two characters most synonymous with the brand today. But they were soon joined by an array of characters with all kinds of with powers, including The Flash, Wonder Woman, Arrow, and Green Lantern.

These characters would, of course, mean nothing without DC’s seething underworld of supervillains. The Joker, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn and DC’s other crazed evil-doers have a range of motivations: Harley murders countless civilians just to put a smile on her puddin's face, Catwoman is driven by her on/off relationship with Batman, and the Joker, in the immortal words of Alfred the Butler, “just wants to watch the world burn.”

Thanks to characters such as these, DC have become one of the two titans of the comic book business. The heroes of the DC universe have been at our sides in comics and movies for nearly a century, yet still continue to captivate generation after generation. DC creations have had a huge impact on pop culture, and words like ‘kryptonite’ or ‘brainiac’ have become part of our everyday language, and a Canadian university even offers studies in "The Science of Batman"!